South Park Reupped

Stan, Kyle, Kenny, Cartman and the rest of the South Park gang will stick around for three more years. The animated comedy's creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, renewed their contract with Comedy Central through 2008.

That means three more 14-episode seasons of the animated show, which is written, directed and edited by Parker and Stone. The duo launched the program on the network in 1997.

Now in its ninth season, the show continues to earn some of the network’s best ratings. The Aug. 31 episode at 10 p.m., for example, earned 1.62 million total viewers—significantly more than the network’s summer prime time average of 958,000.